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By Catherine Paquette Jul 13 2021 10:54AM
Jul 13 2021 10:54AM
Football Ferns get major blow to their Tokyo Olympics preparations as important players held back by their NWSL clubs.
As most Olympic football teams have assembled and travelled to Japan, the Football Ferns are still missing significant parts of their squads.
Football Ferns coach Tom Sermanni has expressed his frustration with two National Women’s Soccer League clubs denying his request to have their contracted Ferns released early for Olympic preparations.
The clubs in question, the Orlando Pride and the North Carolina Courage, were well within their rights to keep their players over the weekend, in this case Ali Riley and Abby Erceg.
Marta, the six-time Fifa world player of the year and Debinha, have already spent a week in camp with Brazil, and Sermanni was stunned his players had not been treated the same, especially as they have not been away on international duty since last March, in Riley’s case, and the 2019 Fifa Women s World Cup, in Erceg’s case. Sermanni first aired his frustrations in an ESPN story published early on Sunday, where he said the situation “reeks of discrimination”, and he was still fuming when he spoke to
Stuff on Sunday evening. “I m still really angry about it,” he said from the team camp in Atsugi, south-west of Tokyo.
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